I spent my youth on older Farmall tractors. I still have four of them, but I also have JD hydrostat tractors. My question is: why was the ground speed of the old tractors set so fast. There are times when I want to just slowly creep but have full throttle for power. I can do that with the hydrostat tractor but sure can't with the SC, the SA and others. Looking back, it would seem that it would have been much better to have at least the 1st gear speed down to just a creep while, at the same time, full throttle/power could have been available.

There were no rototillers or slow driven equipment. So gears were adjusted for ground speeds usable for tillage, including cultivation, that could be adjusted with throttle position for very small plants. Some small Farmalls had hydraulic speed attachments to allow very slow speeds for hand transplanting live plants vegetable, and tobacco. Jim

at the time that these tractors were made slow ground speeds were not as important as they are now. there were no rotory tillers, or snowblowers or other implements that required really slow ground speeds as we now require more and more all the time.

Am I allowed to mention The name Ferguson on this forum? ( Ha ha). The Grey Ferguson"s 1st gear was way too fast for operating a Howard rotovator so Howards developed a special reduction gearbox that could be fitted to the tractor for use with that implement.

Here in Australia, many Farmall H and M tractors were fitted with a low first gear. Our AW-7 Diesel had a very low first gear, which was excellent for very heavy work or just inching along when required.
SadFarmall

IH and Howard Rotavator had the situation covered. The H and M could also be ordered, or retrofitted, with Low-Low first gear. I have a 504 with the Low-Low first. Perhaps they all came that way. The TA further reduces the speed.

You can build a slow speed '40s and '50s IH tractor using factory parts if you are willing to spend a few bucks

Correct, Having driven those tractors in the 50's I agree. Janicholsen and and Handyman are also correct. There was no need for a slower gear. To me 1st was too slow and seldom used except for turning with trailing implements or the occasional hard place the the field. The TA fixed most of that. Hydrostatic is now used for many things -- wasn't needed then.

I remember 1st gear of our JD 60 being almost too slow, until you put it on a chopper in 12' tall silage corn. Low was a lot slower than the Farmalls, but then it had 6 speeds instead of 5 and not as fast in high, so it had a better range until the TA came along.

Earlier tractors (1920s and somewhat later) were probably designed with two things in mind: belt work and tillage. Three speeds were normal. Second was "plowing gear," at around 3 mph (I have actually seen that expression in old sales literature). Low was probably intended for emergency use in case of serious overload, or maybe for some machines that needed to go slow (but not as slow as some of the modern machines, like tillers). High, usually in the 4 mph range, was almost useless on a steel-wheeled tractor. The engines didn't put out enough power to make up for the loss to the ground through the lugs when pulling the rated load(I estimate about 35% loss on average, by looking at old Nebraska tests). For transport, you could barely stay on a steel-wheeled tractor at 4 mph on a gravel road. Been there many times on my father's 10-20. You ended up throttling way back in second, or running in low full throttle at around 2 mph. All of this is just my view on how tractors were conceived way back then. Ain't got no proof. Road gears did start to appear after rubber tires became common (roughly the mid-thirties), and as one commentator says here, IHC did offer 7-mph high gears for F-20 and F-12 and probably some of the other tractors of that era. Would have been welcome. I spent many an hour roaring along the road at 4 mph on our rubber-tired F-12, hauling loads of grain or hay. That's a mile in 15 minutes!

I'm not sure everyone understood my post. I still think the range of ground speeds did not adequately cover the range from "very slow" to "faster". I am thinking specifically about SA & SC tractors. I've probably spent as many hours cultivating with a SC as anyone on this post. And, yes, I've cultivated in all, three lower gears. But, 1st gear, for example, was/is entirely too fast for very small plants, even with the shields down to the dirt line.

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